Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday June 14, 2012 @07:06AM
from the protect-and-serve dept.

MikeatWired writes "We like to think of the drone war as something far away, fought in the deserts of Yemen or the mountains of Afghanistan. But we now know it's closer than we thought, writes Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai at Danger Room. There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed. Public Intelligence, a non-profit that advocates for free access to information, released a map of military UAV activities in the United States on Tuesday. Assembled from military sources — especially this little-known June 2011 Air Force presentation (.pdf) — it is arguably the most comprehensive map so far of the spread of the Pentagon's unmanned fleet. What exact missions are performed at those locations, however, is not clear. Some bases might be used as remote cockpits to control the robotic aircraft overseas, some for drone pilot training. Others may also serve as imagery analysis depots."

Most of those drone "bases" aren't bases for drones. Also, most of those drones are ity-bity guys that are hand launched or portable. Think of it like this.. every Army base that conducts training on a drone, is marked up there. The only controversial drones are the big guys like P/GH.

ewww I am terrified. The Army corp of engineers are using small hand launched "drones" to monitor lake Okeechobee which is frankly a way cool use of tech folks. Yea this guy in a polo shirt throwing a model airplane from a bass boat terrifies me

1. Target practice - better than trap or skeet. I'll bet.22 bird shot would take down the little ones. For the bigger guys, it's always goose season around here....2. Spare parts - the local Radio Shack doesn't carry UAV stuff yet. I'd love to pick up a couple of those little guys when the batteries run down or they hit a tree.3. Cat practice for the ones in your backyard. Better than having the stupid a

Wait, you mean the American military has bases on American soil?! Well stop the fucking presses!

I think the conspiracy theorists are going "they're spying on us!!!" when in reality, a lot of those bases are used just ot launch and recover UAVs.

What people don't realize is these UAVs have extremely long range (especially with in-flight refuelling) so unless they are needed at a moment's notice, stationing them inside the US is a good idea - all your parts are nearby, no supply chain issues, etc.

The Third Amendment prohibits quartering soldiers in private homes during peacetime. WTF are you on about? This is military equipment being stored on military bases, and being used for training and readiness operations like every other piece of military hardware on every other military base spread all throughout the United States. There are *thousands* of bases in the US for all five branches of the military (if you count the Coast Guard and separate out the Marines) in the US. I've personally served on half a dozen of them. These bases have existed from the founding of the country. Where else are you going to quarter soldiers other than bases, since we've obviously (and correctly) prevented them from being quartered in private homes?

The First American Regiment, later called the the 1st Infantry Regiment, now called the 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), was founded in 1784 and obviously lasted through the Confederation and then the United States under the Constitution.

Still it must be pointed out that even though we always had at least some standing Federal force, it is historical that there was great distrust of standing armies at the time of the founding of the US, and that same distrust has had an effect on all sorts of decisions, from heavy use of the National Guard, to the fact that we refused to use naval ranks like Admiral or army ranks above Major General. (Even today, Major General is the highest permanent rank in the US Army, three and four star ranks are only granted while in positions requiring them. Unless you retire in such a position, you revert to your two star rank for retirement purposes.)

U.S. Congress 1784: "standing armies in time of peace are inconsistent with the principles of republican government, dangerous to the liberties of a free people, and generally converted into destructive engines for establishing despotism."

Still it must be pointed out that even though we always had at least some standing Federal force, it is historical that there was great distrust of standing armies at the time of the founding of the US

Arguing about the intent of the Founding Fathers is a bullshit argument. Maybe it was the intent of the Founding Fathers not to have a large standing army. So what? It was also the intent of the Founding Fathers that women not be allowed to vote, that black people could be bought and sold as property and counted as 3/5 of a human being, and Indians should be evicted from their lands.

There are certain core principles that are timeless- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, government with the consent of the governed, freedom of speech and religion. But precisely how we promote those things has to change with the times and the technology. We can't all run around in tricorns with muskets, trading negroes and telling our wives to stay home, just because that's how the Founding Fathers would have done it.

that black people could be bought and sold as property and counted as 3/5 of a human being

Just for the sake of accuracy -- Slaves were whole "persons" according to the Constitution, but it was only 3/5ths of their number that counted for determining a state's representation in the House.

The slave states wanted the full number of their slaves to count, because it would increase their influence in the federal government. It was non-slave states and abolitionists who argued against this, and reducing it to 3/5ths was the compromise.

So you see, it's not counting slaves as less than a full human being (which wasn't what they were doing) that is the problem with the 3/5ths clause. It's that people who were slaves and thus not represented by their government were being counted towards representation at all. It's not that it's less than 1, it's that it's greater than 0!

Just wanted to put that into perspective. It's kinda messed up that we had to make compromises like that just to form our nation. But you know, the Founder's reasoning about freedom and liberty were quite good. The only problem was that they didn't extend the concepts to everyone, which is a problem easily fixed -- logically, anyway.

The "wholesale fetishism" bit makes this all a matter of personal opinion, but the large standing army and enduring military-industrial complex followed WWII as a result of the Cold War. Each prior war saw a buildup during the war and a rapid dropoff in military spending immediately following. WWII broke this trend and we have yet to return to comparable military spending as in the interwar period.

As sibling states, there has been a standing Army of whatever counts as the "government" of the "United States" since 1775. I use the quotes because of course the Continental Congress was only nominally a government until after the end of the Revolution, and they didn't call themselves the United States until later, but where ever you count the "founding" of the country (unless you consider the "founding" to be the battles of Lexington and Concorde) there has pretty much always been a standing Army. The A

It was *not* a standing army. It was essential in reserve. The Constitution explicitly limits the power of the government to maintain a standing army--and it appears that they tried to follow that all the way up until the late 19th century/early 20th century. Now we are at a constant "state of war." I guess that's one way around the limits imposed by the Constitution.

Notice how I never said the US didn't have an army at the founding of the country.

It was not a "large" standing army, but it was a small full time force, intended to be the backbone of a larger Army as needed; and it was "standing". The idea was to avoid a large standing force to prevent it from being used tyrannically, but keep a small standing force so someone knew WTF they were doing if we needed to fight. Otherwise you get a bunch of amateurs with guns trying to beat off the British. It worked once, but not very well and mostly only after we'd had years to actually train the Conti

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

So, one has to assume that a drone is being quartered in your home without your consent, AC? Want a tip on how to defeat it? Watch the Terminator movies. They are probably the most informative, and action-filled set of documentary movies (I assume documentary, time-travel and all) that you will ever see.

I think what is happening is that people are conflating their fear of being observed by drones with the fact that they have a larger than expected presence on US soil and believe that this large presence actually means that it will be used for observing citizens. This is a logical leap with hilarity inducing results when they fail to express themselves clearly and make the needed connections evident.

Wow. I am truly impressed by your lack of knowledge, ignorance, your false claims (did you actually read that amendment?) and ranting. Do you have even a close idea what any of the words you used (liberal, military dictatorship, fascism, true citizen, socialist, "elect") actually mean? I was tempted to include one or more derogatory comments on your person, but I shall refrain from doing so at this time.

Yeah, I hate it when they land those drones on my couch, and don't let me move them. Makes my dog angry too since she can't nap there anymore, and she doesn't even have inalienable human rights. Where's the canine rights?!

No wait, the 3rd amendment doesn't apply, and you're a fucking idiot who enforces the conservative stereotype.

Oh, and "this is the kind of fascism you get when you elect a socialist" is an awesome statement, since fascism and socialism are polar opposites...

Makes my dog angry too since she can't nap there anymore, and she doesn't even have inalienable human rights. Where's the canine rights?!

On the other hand, the drones are usually pretty warm so the cat loves them. The drones act like they don't like it and complain that the cat is making them late for their patrol, but when I suggest they could make the cat move they always say "But she's sleeping! D'aawww."

Maybe I shouldn't be saying this on a public forum, but the drones' weakness for Teh Kittehs seems like a major weakness to me. I don't know why they programmed them that way.

SF definitely has some weirdos, but they're far saner than DC overall. Sedona I will give you -- that place is utterly apeshit, having been taken over by new-agers looking for ley lines and selling aura photography and assorted bullshit like that. (Aura photography cracks me up -- I guess there is a use for shitty lenses after all.)

Not sure why this was moderated as Funny, such a mapping would be quite interesting and depending upon how far off something is when it is spotted, a drone flying overhead could easily be spotted but someone might not know what it is.

Anyone who hasn't seen a drone in flight - most people in the continental US for example - wouldn't be able to identify it, I mean consider a Predator drone [ddmcdn.com]. Its a weird-looking fucker at the best of times, now imagine seeing it lit up by a setting sun, flitting through low cloud... The Martians are coming, the Martians are coming!!!!!!! Definitely an "Unidentified Flying Object".

And for gods same, don't try to take a photo of it with a long lens, while wearing arab dress.

There are also more US Army, Air Force, and Navy bases in the US than in the rest of the world combined. Many of them have tanks, warplanes, aircraft carriers, howitzers, and many other weapons that can be loaded and armed with live ammunition and dangerous explosives. I mean, who knew right? Oh wait... Everybody knew. Of course we have drone bases in the US. They have to train people, provide headquarters and on going operational training for units not deployed, stored undeployed hardware... this is the stupidest thing I've ever read.

What did these guys think? They send untested multimillion dollar drones over to Yemen where they hand them to an untrained unit and expect them to just figure out how they work in the field? It's just like any other military operation: for every deployed unit there are probably five waiting in reserve, getting readiness training, refitting, etc. Most of that happens in the US.

They send untested multimillion dollar drones over to Yemen where they hand them to an untrained unit and expect them to just figure out how they work in the field?

Well, considering the targets dont shoot back they might just as well do the training in the field.

The idea that our military attacks peaceful targets that don't even bother to defend themselves is beyond ridiculous. You should be ashamed for insuinuating such. You are demeaning the job of the military, and belittling the risk they are taking on your behalf.

Whether you desire the military to be active in a particular location or not, give them the respect due to a person who is willing to follow out the wishes of our government, despite their personal feelings, in the hope that we do make the world a b

I don't disagree. Your questions are valid, and had the article been written in a reasonable fashion, asking those questions and wondering how we might find out the answers it would have been a much more useful piece. As it is the piece is a written in tones intended to make the reader panicked over the hardly surprising fact that the US military is storing and using US military hardware inside the US. As if anyone should be even slightly surprised over this fact. Of course we're doing this, the bulk of all US military personnel and equipment are in the US; and except for a few periods of heavy action (the World Wars, mainly), the bulk of US military personnel and hardware are *always* located in the US. Home territory is simply the most convenient place to do most of what nondeployed need to do.

1. Keep in mind that the UAV operators are lower ranking people, usually E-2 to E-5, that really just want to go home and drink or play WoW. We usually pick some random car, read the license plate, then test the auto-follow feature for a few minutes, then test it again. It is really anti-climactic. Training flights are the worst, 16 hours of nothing happening gets old really quick.

2. The information is basically stored until the drives are full. Nobody really pays attention to it until the maintainers (former me) come along and format the drive. Yes, I will admit that UAV's have caught the occasional nude sunbather in the backyard and such. Since I was in Georgia, it was not nearly as common as some other areas. So I cannot speak to the efficacy of peeping-tom drones in the San Diego area.

3. I'm sure the CIA, FBI, or local police could get the information, but first they would have to know the drone was even up there. Flight schedules for military aircraft are considered secret and are not published on a bulletin board or anything. UAV flight schedules are kept decently secure, because of their sensitive equipment. If they call the military asking if there were any drones in the air, they are really grasping at straws. Second, with a camera range of 30+ miles, there's a lot of area to cover. Third, during my 3 years at one of these "drone" bases, we never heard anything from any law enforcement or spy agency.

First, you obviously know nothing about the military. A unit doesn't keep secrets amongst itself. If it happened, everyone would have known about it.

Second, only the maintainers would have access. The world is not like "Hackers," where a few cd and ls commands will magically crack a password. What's DOD standard now, 15 characters, 2 upper case, 2 lower case, 2 numbers, 2 symbols? Let's also throw in the 5 or so layers of physical security, multiple alarms, internal surveillance footage, server logs, i

There is a difference between military operations, where the mission is directly against a citizen of the state and within the confines of its borders, and military training. I believe the parent author is referring to the latter.

Interestingly, the Posse Comitatus Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act) only covers the Army and Air Force. So the Marine UAV bases could still be used against state citizens.

The US Navy (and the Marines along with them) are covered by a DOD directive which aligns with Posse Comitatus. However, it's self-regulation and could be rescinded at any time, with massive political backlash.

Actually, that only effects certain branches of the military. Read the Posse Comitatus Act [wikipedia.org]. It directly affects the Army and Air Force, but doesn't restrict Navy (Marines), Coast Guard (who have a law enforcement directive to begin with) or National Guard. The Navy is self-regulated by a DOD directive, which could be retracted at any time.

Oh, and it doesn't deny the ability to use federal troops for law enforcement, it only requires Congressional approval; which if you look at how the authorization of fo

"But we now know it's closer than we thought" It has been common knowledge that drones are stationed on and piloted from US soil. Just wait until the author finds out how many soldiers, tanks, and even nuclear bombs are also located on US soil.

[kent brockman]Just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the Army, but a more alarmist name would be... The Killbot Factory.[/kent brockman]

I just saw a investigative report about this just last night on the Colbert Report. What's to stop Al Kaida from hacking in, taking over our drones and dispensing some Hellfire lovin' to the red-white-and-blue?!!!! Norton?! We need to base these fuckers in theater so there's not threat to the homeland from Anonymous.

We keep fighter jets, ships and even nuclear missiles on American soil (and waters) should we be worried about those too? It's barely newsworthy! I'd actually be surprised if there weren't drone bases here.

The bill says nothing about surveillance or any specific numbers. In fact, it appears to be about incorporating UAVs for atmospheric/wildlife research, as well as doing the regulatory due-diligence to enable unmanned commercial flights, should airlines begin to move that direction.

The "specific numbers" includes funding of $63.4 Billion, all for building drones, which comes to about 30,000 of them. Read the funding request.

All the language about next-gen air traffic control includes a push for unmanned commercial flights, but it's also intended to unify the manned and unmanned systems, which currently do not talk to each other, increasing the risk of drone / non-drone collisions (there have already been a couple of incidents.

I don't know WTF you're talking about, but if you prefer do deal with all the crazy ads that the MSM puts on their sites, you could check the Washington Times [washingtontimes.com], or just Google it yourself.

It's the nature of the device in question. There are many reasons to have an airbase in the continental U.S., like training and defense in the case of attack. Drones, on the other hand, currently serve one and only one purpose, and that's aerial surveillance. Having drones based in the continental U.S. is only useful if the drones are being used over U.S. territory (failing border patrol) and having the U.S. military running surveillance essentially on civilian populations raises the hackles of many people. We've heard the whole "we'll only use it against the bad guys!" line too many times to believe it any more.

"nd that's aerial surveillance"and? The EPA uses them to monitor waster dumping in remote agencies, they are use to patrol military bases, remote missle silos, and probabl a 1000 other uses.

Using a drone to monitor anyone not actually involved in illegal activities would be the stupidest way to do it. Please, you leave a hug foot print of data anywhere you go. Far easier to use electronics to monitor you.

Now, if you are doing business with a known group of criminals, and you are encrypt

Mount Washington in New Hampshire's White Mountains shows up on the map, which surprised me a bit. It is in a fairly remote area (relative to major population centers) and happens to be one of the major tourist attractions in the area (Don't forget your "This car climbed Mt. Washington" bumper sticker if you make it up and down the Mt. Washington Auto Road). There's not a whole lot there - a cafe and weather station at the peak, hiking trails, forest land and ski resorts nearby. It's located within a State Park. This suggests the disclaiming statements at the end of the summary probably apply to a lot of the 64 "drone bases" referred to by the dramatic headline. As the highest peak in the Northeast (6,288 ft or 1,917 m), it seems like a good spot for communications or sensing equipment. Or, since the weather is quite wild and variable at the summit (held the record for the highest recorded wind gust for 76 years), it could be a good spot to stress-test a drone under severe conditions. Hardly a "Drone Base".

It's also a good location to do special ops training which you can tease out from the presentation that was listed. Furthermore, the presentation also indicates that RQ-11 Raven [wikipedia.org] and Wasp III [wikipedia.org] drones are what are operated. These are small "backpack" drones that are used for scouting which would make sense if they are being used for special ops training exercises.

You missed the part about it being a popular tourist destination. It's isolated in the sense that it's up on top of a mountain in a National Park rather than somewhere in the middle of the I-95 East Coast Megalopolis, but doesn't mean there aren't people around nearly all of the time. It's still visited by thousands of tourists/day during the temperate parts of the year, and is within a few miles (and plain view) of a major ski resort that recieves lots of visitors in the winter months. It's on top of a

At least one marker is totally incorrect. Syracuse NY, Hancock Field, 174th Fighter Wing (ANG) [wikipedia.org] shows its status as "Future". As of March 2010, they sent the last of their F-16's out and fully transitioned to MQ-9 Reapers.

How are unmanned flying vehicles any different than manned helicopters and airplanes used by various agencies during the course of duty? Manned aircraft are used daily for any number of law enforcement (surveillance, speed traps, border protection, etc), fire protection, crop dusting, and even news and traffic gathering?

Why is not having a pilot in the actual aircraft a reason to pull out the tinfoil and white noise makers?

"But they can arm them" isn't a valid excuse because there's no reason they can't arm

As stated in the presentation, these are "activities" and not necessarily permanent locations. Though many probably are permanent, it's a bad assumption to think they are not just sites for demos, storage, or training. Don't forget UAVs can be as small as the remote control toy airplanes you can buy for your kids at the store. Also, this "little known" presentation was marked for public distribution and was given at an AFCEA function which is hardly some conspiratorial organization.

If they control drones overseas, what about the lag time between signal from the pilot and action by the drone? Does a delay here just not matter with drones?

Of course not. It's only a drone, after all!

Seriously though, I suspect that most remotely piloted drones have a significant level of self flight capability. The pilot isn't doing the moment by moment compensation for turbulence and drift, but is acting more as a guide. The closest car analogies I can think of are systems like automatic transmissions and anti-lock brakes. The on-board systems deal with all the fiddly bits, and the operator does the higher level control. Some craft, such as the predat

Or a hybrid. Onboard computer does the rapid-response compensation for changing atmospheric conditions, while the operator tells it where to and where to point the cameras. Should be able to do everything at 750ms you'd want from a drone - they aren't used for dogfighting.

Especially when using Hellfire missiles as the armament. You need to tell the flight computer on board the drone, in general, where to go - download a target to the Hellfire (just pointing at something on the screen is good enough) and send it on it's way. You only need a few dozen feet of accuracy, the Hellfire will obliterate anything in the general vicinity of where it lands.

I don't see anything wrong with using drones in active combat per se. Their current use as a tool to assassinate people, however, i

Fox news has been drumming up dear about drones as an attack against Obama.Of course they are doing this because agency like the EPA use them to find polluters and corporation dropping crap into our drinking water.As a by product of that, Drones are higher up on peoples radar. heh.

If you think that is cool, look up a map of national guard armories in your state. Then look up the army reserves and air guard and so on. There is no point hiding these things because it is simply impossible to eliminate a key component.

The president will always have control. He is the Commander-in-Chief and every soldier is sworn to obey his orders. Each person in the military knows the chain of command that starts at the President and down to themselves, it is not ambiguous. However, i have no idea if the DHS swears any kind of oath or is directly connected to the Commander-in-Chief.